Extract – Letter to impatient ecologists and to those who find that they are exaggerating | Critical pathways

Faced with the climate emergency, the environmental movement has lost its bearings. To tackle the current crisis, the dissemination and adoption of a whole new generation of radical ideas is necessary, says Hugo Séguin. And to do so, the author calls on reforming and radical environmentalists to put aside their differences and unite.

I believe that the environmental movement – ​​of which I am a part – has now lost its bearings. In the face of the deepening crisis, we confess our helplessness, either by clinging to solutions that do not attack the roots of the problem and which come too late, or by standing back and crying “Do something! “. We know we have to change direction or we’ll crash our noses into the wall. We also know that the era of half measures is over and we need to move up a gear. That we must be radicals.

Normally, I would conclude that we need to imagine some kind of clean break in favor of a whole new system – a new way of thinking, of living together, of governing ourselves and of flourishing individually and collectively.

This is not where my thoughts led me.

I don’t want to put my hopes in the advent of a Grand Soir where everything changes and everything is settled. I don’t think that’s how societies change. As Thomas Piketty reminds us in Capital and ideology, history cannot be considered deterministically. Multiple trajectories are always possible, depending on the balance of power, events and the slower evolution of ideas that run through our societies.

Like him, I believe that societies evolve more or less slowly, and that certain events can accelerate the movement. In Quebec, it took the death of Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis for the dikes that held back an entire society thirsty for modernity to break down. In the United States, it took a civil war to begin a long march towards the emancipation of African-Americans. And it took two world wars and a major economic crisis to bring about the social democratic societies that we have known for decades in liberal democracies.

But our societies are not shifting into a new normal because of such disruptive events. They topple because within them have fermented for decades radical ideas whose time has come. Only then, yes, wars, pandemics, revolutions and regime change can bring down the old order to make way for the one that was already emerging.

I think that’s what our job is, as a movement: to rally around a new generation of radical ideas and prepare society to adopt them.

I titled this essay Letter to impatient greens and those who find they are exaggerating first with the aim of addressing my peers, those who militate like me within the environmental movement, whether they are reformers or more radical.

To my reformer friends, I say we have fallen short. We have achieved significant gains, yes, but not enough. We need to evolve and embrace wider, think deeper and venture outside of a box in which we have become increasingly uncomfortable.

To my more radical friends, I propose a good risk, that of reinvesting places of power. Not the ones we would like to see eventually emerge, but the ones that exist today in the real world. We don’t have time to wait for the advent of a proportional electoral system, the establishment of participatory budgeting mechanisms or the proliferation of direct democracy platforms to unleash our full political potential.

I also wanted to challenge those who do not feel that they belong to this movement but who occupy positions of decision or influence.

By showing that our daily life is made up of a host of ideas that were once radical but have become normal, I wanted to play down and defuse the reflexes that lead us to reject new ideas and refuse to give them a chance. Perhaps through this prism many will take a different look at the bearers of radicalism who are knocking at their door today.

This essay is ultimately addressed to the innovators and the marginalized whom I urge to persevere. Being the bearers of new ideas is a thankless task. We fight against all odds and we receive indifference, sarcasm and contempt. You don’t always win, and when you win, recognition doesn’t always come either. I hope that you will accept my reflections as a tribute to your resilience and as a kind of rehabilitation of your action so crucial in the public space.

I hope I have launched here a series of important questions, both for the future of our movement and of our society as a whole.

Letter to impatient greens and those who find they are exaggerating

Hugo Seguin

Ecosociety, April 2022

232 pages